Hey, Women’s Safety Isn’t a Competition, Barkha

Beyond studies, stats and conferences, do women feel safe stepping out late at night? If not, we aren’t there yet.

“India is safer for women as compared to the US and UK where incidences of sexual violence are higher”. That was Barkha Dutt quoting Amartya Sen, in response to a question by Norah O’Donnell of CBS.

Surely, women’s safety is not a contest between nations. It is not about India being SAFER. It is about India being SAFE ENOUGH.

Barkha may be right – gender  is “complex”. In a country where sexual crime is hugely unreported, chances are that we will shine in comparison with any other nation. Because the “complex” bits suffer silently, papered over with under-reported stats.

Let us quickly (without dwelling on data) look at the life of  the “safer” little Indian girl.

Unsafe In The Womb

In significant parts of India (and its cities) wombs are ‘detoxified’ of  female fetuses.  Mobile ‘clinics’  trundle deep into dusty nooks and crannies of the country ‘cleansing’ the nation of these baby girls.

These mobile clinics don’t trundle back with the abortion numbers they execute. It is a one way street.

Not Safe At Home

I definitely don’t need data here. I know, very closely, four young ladies who have been sexually abused by  uncles and cousins, while they were little girls.  If these educated, liberal, city-bred lasses did not report  the ‘sexual crimes’, what are the chances that lakhs of other girls in small towns and villages even dare to whisper the abuse to their mothers.

And data, sadly, supports anecdote. Only ONE percent of all the victims of sexual violence in India report the crime to the police (The Lancet).

Unsafe Little Brides

Are little girls really safe in India, when they are married off – like bonded labour – soon after they are born? Pulled away from schools and thrust into early motherhood? Does this crime get counted in the Women’s Safety Contest between nations?

Marriage Is Not Sacred Or Safe

“The concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be applied in the Indian context” where “marriage is a sacrament”, says a MoS (Home).

There is an exception to Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code that says that sexual intercourse by a man with his wife – who is 15 years or above – is not rape – even if it is without consent.  This, when the legal marriageable age for women in India is 18 years.

The  Supreme Court’s rejection of a plea to criminalise marital rape is just another license for “sexual crimes”.  And how real is the data that says one fifth of married men have forced their wives for sex. How many ‘wives’  would venture to reveal their marital rapes before our frowning courts?

Unsafe “Scarce” Women

Back to foeticide - a skewed sex ratio leads to a spate in sexual crime against women, simply because it creates a competition over “scarce women”. According to calculations by Christophe Guilmoto of the Institute of Development Research, a Paris based think-tank, there will be 191 men for every 100 women by 2060-64.  We don’t need to look over our shoulder to see if China will have more sexual crime or the UK less. This is indication enough that  women in India are going to be neither “safe” nor “safer”.

I would love to join Barkha in this happy number painting, and crow about India having a woman Prime Minister four decades ago . But with less that 11% representation of women in the Parliament today, this narrative of 40 years ago seems as buried in history as the evergreen Indian claim – “Jab zero diya mere Bharat ne”.

I would love to join Barkha in “conversations that we no longer have”  on India’s strides in women safety, but headlines that scream a model’s rape by a senior cop in purportedly safe-for-women Mumbai, hold me back.

Forget studies and stats and conferences and headlines – Does Barkha feel safe stepping out late at night in Delhi?  If yes, then she and I must live in different Delhis.